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Scientists Find New Painkiller From Saliva
dptalia writes "Scientists have found a new pain killer based on human saliva. Apparently 1 gram of the new drug provides as much pain blocking as 3 grams of morphine. The drug blocks the breakdown of the body's natural pain killing mechanism. Scientists say the molecule is simple and synthesis is expected to be simple."
When the researchers injected a pain-inducing chemical into rats' paws, 1 gram of opiorphin per kilogram of body weight achieved the same painkilling effect as 3 grams of morphine.
Well wouldn't you say anything to make them stop spitting on you?
"No more, yes alright it works I'm not in pain anymore."
Moving out of cuckoo land, I have a twisted ankle after a fall yesterday should I hock a loogie onto it?
liqbase
When we complain about how aliens probe our anuses (anii?) with large metallic rods, sometimes it helps to put things into perspective by realizing that we are making rats walk around on pins until they need painkillers to block the agony.
I appreciate that the scientific process needs to go boink, but man's inhumanity to man is only outweighed by his inhumanity to animals.
I'll take the morphine, something that I know has been tested mainly on humans.
Just when I'd kicked my morphine habit, now I'm going to get jailed for posession of saliva.
'cos morphine rules !!
I was in hospital one time after an operation and I was on a self administered morhine drip. But it would only give 1mg every 2 minutes (or whatever is the appropriate dose). But the machine also logs how many times you press the button so the staff can see how much pain you think you're in.
So I wouldn't have to count, I pressed the button every time the track changed on my mp3 player. Best hospital visit evar!!!1
I was lying there one time, opened my eyes and the Everquest HUD was there. In the chat window I was being spammed with :
You need to go to the toilet.
You need to go to the toilet.
You need to go to the toilet.
You need to go to the toilet.
Eventually I went and everybody who spoke on the journey, their chat came up in the window.
It was ace.
When they checked the machine they asked me if I was in a lot of pain, I ust said "no I like the morphine" and we all had a laugh. Until they took it off me.
Then they gave me these awful morphine based tablets and they gave me a bad trip so I stopped taking them.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The scientists never think these things through, do they? This is going to create huge problems for school discipline. Now whenever students are caught shooting spit balls at other students they can claim they were just implanting an airborne pain killer delivery system.
"But I was just helping Anne's neck pain..."
[X] I am willing to test mankinds new potent pain killer.
I have.. migraines... on occasion...
Saliva is a painkiller? How come I have toothache then?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Just when society figured that people can be hurt psychologically and kept in control with never ending bad news on TV they found a great physiological painkiller.
(Yes, I hate this reality.)
So, the behaviour observed in animals where they lick wounds, and even in humans, that 'kiss it better' (introduce saliva to the wound), or suck on a sore wound to make it feel better, by instinct, hasn't given the clue that there's something in saliva that helps?
There's a whole store of herb and animal lore that's been systematically quashed for decades (well, since the great witch hunts really), and science is only just getting round to looking at it now.
There's a lot to be said for 'complimentary' medicine for lesser ailments (although the modern pharmaceutical treatments are definitely magnitudes more effective for front line serious treatment). Rather than just decrying it, perhaps it should be investigated more thoroughly?
how many people thought that said salvia?
Sorry, it had to be said.
>airborne pain killer delivery system.
I can imagine Bush demanding that whatever ordnance is being dropped on civilians in is renamed to this rather inspired description.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I am going to claim saliva addiction and start snogging every good looking girl I see for the rest of the afternoon.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
..
...
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I bet morphine is a lot more fun than saliva, whatever the pain blocking abilities.
Why is an old Oliver Stone film on Slashdot?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Saliva is a painkiller? How come I have toothache then?
The smartest joke ever. LOL LOL LOL LOL
Easy to synthesize.
Made from saliva.
Well, the "War on Drugs" is about to get interesting. Have you had you mouth drained by a government-approved suction center yet today? "Today the police knocked over another spit house..."
(I know, I know, synthesize means they don't need actual saliva... just trying to be funny.)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Scientists say the molecule is simple and synthesis is expected to be simple."
If it weren't for that students of the world could rejoice with a much less embarrassing way to pay for their university fees than sperm donation, they could've spat their way through uni!
Spit painkiller?
Nifty thriller.
Better still,
The no-blood spiller.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I understand they might be comparing relative potency, but comparing to THREE GRAMS of morphine is kinda excessive.
300 mg morphine will render just about any human being unconscious and apnoeic pretty quickly.
3000 mg will knock you out cold, stop you breathing, and drop your blood pressure precipitously, more or less instantaneously.
In which sense, numerous things have have the same pain-killing effect as three grams of morphine.
Being hit by a freight train, for instance.
They isolated a peptide which inhibits two enzymes that chew up enkephalins, the body's natural pain killers. Inhibiting these makes the naturally-released enkephalins hang around longer. The problem is that peptide drugs have a checkered history. See the article linked below.
0 3v1
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/06058651
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I find particularly disturbing that whenever a story like this is posted no one seems to care about the horrible experiments made on animals or ridicule those who do.
I don't think any scientific finding is worth it if we have to pay with such horror and cruelty for it. Can't we advance science another way? Even if we couldn't I'd rather live in an inconvenient world.
for suuceesful if you don't The mobo blew represents the other members in the point more [tux.org]? Are you Charnel house. The Perspective, the
No, you got that wrong. Now you can get that bully slugging spitballs at you impounded for drug dealing.
Ya know, lemons and lemonade...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, one thing's for sure. As soon as this stuff is researched, someone will patent it. Let's see how far the patenting idiocy has grown by now. Are they gonna get the patent for the procedure or the patent on saliva?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
3 grams of morphine is about 100 times the maximum daily dose for a 70kg adult. The article even mentions that it was per kilo of body weight. Now that would be a huge dose. But nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if this actually makes it into anything useful for human use.
So mothers who kiss their child's wounds may be performing a biologically active pain-killer and not just an emotional placebo?
All other rights can be derived from freedom of speech.
When we hurt ourselves there is a natural instinct to lick the wound so I'm not that surprised that there is a pain killer in saliva. The primary reason for licking a wound is to clean it but if there was a pain killer included as well that would increase the reason for licking the wound and, thus, probably increase the chance of survival of the animal. Natural selection would quickly select those animals that produced the pain killer.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
More than the idea of reducing the quantity required, the question is whether this substance can block pain without having addictive qualities. That's a very important question, I think, and one that it seems they don't have the info on yet, because I can't imagine them leaving it out if they knew.
"Come on, baby. I got a real bad groin injury today. Can't you help me with the pain?"
I kind of do this stuff for a living so I don't need to RTFA to know that 3 grams of morphine/kg of body weight is way past a lethal dose.
-William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Saliva-medicine turns into addictive drug sold illegally on the streets in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ......
BBC got it right: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6142842.stm
Sometimes it's a matter of them telling you to think about your tongue in your mouth.
Or worse, to think about your breathing.
God, I hate when they do that.
Sweet! Now I can write-off hooker BJ's as a medical expense.
Oh, come on! Don't "scientists" have anything better to do than state things that are already known?* It's been known that saliva in animals has antiseptic and pain-killing properties for ages. That's why they (and we) have the instint to lick our wounds.
* in the works next, a t-shirt that'll let you air-drum!
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
saliva kills YOU !!
...some scientific news to really drool about
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
So making out with a significant other helps you ignore some pain and keeps you from being depressed? I could have told you that!
But why is the rum gone?
But what am I going to do with all of this iodine and red phosphorus?
.. so the next time my wife says she has a headache, I will have the perfect cure for it!!!
They didn't inject 3g of morphine in a human.
They didn't even inject 3g of morphine in a rat.
What they found was that 3 grams of morphine per kg body weight is about as potent as 1 gram of morphine per kg body weight of the new saliva substance.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I see a lot of slaps coming at your face if you try that. But on the bright side, you can actually claim you need painkillers after that.
Your sacrifice in the name of science will not be forgotten.
...injured animals lick their wounds?
Just when they were about to loosen their restrictions on bringing fluids onto a plain...
I can see it now:
TSA gate-thug: "Sir, please spit into the garbage bag."
Me: "I... haff... no.. mo... thaliva..."
TSA gate-thug: "Don't get sassy with me! Spit!"
Me: "I'll try... Thee? Nothing!"
TSA gate-thug: "Supervisor! We've got a wet one! CODE RED!!!"
It was also determined that saliva (esp that of women who have borne children) can also be used as hair gel, facial cleanser and stain remover.
In an almost off-topic manner, the molecule talked about here, opiorphin, is unknown by Google and Yahoo!, and MSN finds 5 results for it, 2 of them being relevant articles in english.
You just got troll'd!
"I kind of do this stuff for a living"
You french girls all day?
I'm selling 1 liter of my own homemade saliva.
:)
Bids starting at $0.99.
Auction ends at 10 am EST
Now your employer can justify spitting on the employees as a workforce motivation tool.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Seriously, what follows isn't meant to start a flame war at all. I'm just curious...
I notice a lot of times that when people see a behavior or physical feature in an organism, they begin stating the evolutionary reason it came about.
Isn't this a case of stating some pretty big conjecture with a tone of voice normally reserved for more certain beliefs? I mean, sure licking wounds COULD have been evolutionarily preferred because of either of the two biological reasons stated (anti-germ vs. anti-pain), but how do you go from a certain cause being plausible to believing that the cause was the actual one?
I realize that we all try to understand how new observations fit into the world views we hold, but it just seems a little strange to me to state such conjectures with the same tone of confidence as we do, say, when talking about the clear continuum of forms that exist in the fossil record.
Any thoughts?
please lick it!
So when my mom kissed the boo-boo better, it actually worked?
Cool, I always thought so....
...when spitting on her when we try to do it dirty
As for the small rat-like dogs, I'm afraid they're pretty much worthless even for cruel and inhumane experiments. However, you can still feed them to coyotes. Coyotes are cool dogs like golden retrievers and they eat small rat-like dogs! They go through poodles like I go through popcorn. Yay coyotes! Alligators are no good though. Sure they eat small rat-like dogs and the occasional resident from Florida but they're cold blooded and you know they're trying to bring back the dominance of the dinosaur. I suggest we genetically engineer crocodiles to have warm blood and fur. That'd show them!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
goddammit where are my mod points?!
I find it doubtful that you could have an effective painkiller that wasn't usable recreationally.
The human body's pain regulatory system is tightly bound up with a behaviour-rewarding system. Certain actions which are evolutionarily beneficial (to the species or the tribe, even if not to the individual) trigger a release of endorphins, the body's own homebrew morphine analogues which are also produced in response to pain. When an individual is not in pain, stimulation of the endorphin receptors produces a highly pleasurable sensation.
Opiates such as morphine or heroin are chemically similar enough to endorphins to bind to the same receptors. This makes them good painkillers. It also makes them good ways to induce pleasurable sensations for recreational purposes.
Beside any psychological effect (which may well be habit-forming in its own right), continued over-use of opiates can cause a reduction in the body's endorphin production. When the artificial painkillers wear off, the body is not ready with natural painkillers and so normal bodily functions produce heightened sensations -- the blood can be felt flowing through arteries, the ends of bones can be felt moving past one another, and so on. The exact manifestation of symptoms is a person-to-person variable. Most people find this state unbearable and so seek out more opiates rather than wait for the body's endorphin production to stabilise. This is physical dependence (the body cannot function normally without drugs). At £1 a breath, a heroin habit is not a cheap habit unless you are a rich rock star.
Some people have found that they can naturally produce endorphins in more than sufficient quantities to mask pain, and actually deliberately harm themselves to trigger an endorphin release. (Gripping ice cubes tightly in the hands is one of the least-dangerous ways to cause temporary pain sensations and so trigger endorphin production, and is recommended by some agencies for persistent self-harm practitioners). Others have found that by deliberately performing (what they perceive to be) altruistic acts (such as helping an old lady across the road, whether or not she actually wants to cross the road), they can stimulate endorphin production.
Unless the pain-relieving and pleasure-inducing properties of endorphins are separable, any painkiller that attempts to mimic their action will be both usable recreationally and doubly habit-forming.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It has been discussed for some time that tolerance to pain is increased by having an orgasm. Therefore, any migraine or headache complaints by your wife actually should be a reason to get jiggy.
Seriously, though, I can sympathize with your view. I understand that many people (I don't know if this includes you) put animals on the same level as humans as we are all "fellow creatures" on this planet. From that point of view, harming animals for research is certainly barbarous. I expect the scientists who did this experiment thought nothing of it, having routinely done much worse things to rats (I mean, none of them even died here).
I believe man is worth more than animals, but I do not think they are worthless. At one time in my life, I would have made some of the same arguments I've seen in this thread that try to reduce your concerns to irrational sentimentality. They claim that you only care because of the "cuteness" of the animal, or that you are hypocritical because you kill thousands of microorganisms every time you bathe or brush your teeth. To trivialize our feelings of compassion toward animals is to deny part of our humanity. Aren't we all concerned about a child who is cruel to animals or tortures insects? Don't the experts tell us such behavior may be a warning sign? Whether one thinks it's rational or not, there may be some value in compassion for animals.
I believe there is a line that needs to be drawn on what we can do in the name of scientific research, but we are pushing the line all the time, and I think most people aren't outraged because they just don't really realize what's going on, or because they've been convinced to ignore those feelings. Fetal stem cell research is (IMO) about as bad as it gets. We're not even talking about animals anymore, they actually create (presumably unsustainable) human embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells from them. Think about this, you can argue about whether such an embryo is a human life, but it's getting close. It was from such an embryo that they cloned "Dolly" the sheep. How long before our world starts looking like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel?
I don't agree that the ends justifies the means. We can not arbitrarily allow everything in the name of science on the grounds that it may benefit humanity someday. So where do we draw the line? You might be okay with where the line is today, but what if tomorrow they move it past your point of comfort? Will you be outraged and take action? Or will you move your line?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
At first, I thought they said "Scientists Find New Painkiller from Salvia"
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
I'm finding this hard to swallow.
Finally, science to back up the art of "kiss it to make it better".
Love is the drug for me!
--
make install -not war
I, for one, welcome our saliva-junky, impervious to pain, rat overlords.
that spitting on the sidewalk will now be prosecuted as "distribution of a controlled substance"....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
.. its that they didn't even BOTHER to call me after that.
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
i must alert my girlfriend there is pain in my lap!
who am i kidding this is slashdot
"Lick ones wounds" actually works! Who would have thought!
cheap buy v1agra xanax phentermine saliva spit
Now, when I see one of those really hardcore pornos, I won't cringe when the guy spits on the girl's face after he slaps her.
Have you tried Tai Chi? I know first-hand that if you take the time to learn Tai Chi, your pain will disappear. It is NOT an instant process, but if you spend a couple years with Tai Chi, it will pay off. From what it sounds like, there is nothing you can lose.
Usually when someone finds out something like this, they'll patent it. Due to the strange way patents work in the US, does this mean I'll have to get a licensing agreement now before I spit?
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
If doing so would cure cancer so many would line up to do so you could sell tickets.
Practically speaking, several billion people will do the equivalent just to eat lunch today - much less do something as helpful to the human condition as find a cheap safe alternative to morphine
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
If you read about what CO2 does, it sounds horrible for euthanasia, but if you ever saw it in action you'd see there isn't any struggle involved and no *apparent* pain. I've used CO2 to kill literally thousands and thousands of rats for mine and other people's snake collections (I processed 4,000 or so adults in two afternoons for a few months feed for a few large collections of snakes).
The animals literally slow down, lay down, and pass out and don't wake up. There isn't any vocalization or any struggle etc. You might get leg twitches etc as they finally die, but you get those nervous reflexes regardless of method of killing.
What I don't kill by this method I used the good ole whap them on the head method... hold firmly onto the tail, hit them HARD on a metal/concrete/etc surface (especially the edge of something such as the edge of a table) and it kills them very quickly. If you don't hit the animal hard enough you don't kill it and just make it suffer. Sounds brutal, but much better than death due to some of the very painful envenomations from animals in my collection, and a lot better than being squeezed to death.
...but let me assure you that mother nature doesn't.
Can you imagine the pain of being eaten by a large predator? Remember that man's evolutionary ancestors were not always at the top of the food chain; predation has certainly touched you.
Also, the venoms of poisonous animals have evolved to increase pain, allowing the predator to more effectively incapacitate the victim.
Just because mankind removes itself from the sadistic slaughter of the world does not mean that the slaughter itself abates. No matter how violent and predatory we may imagine ourselves to be, we are amateurs compared to what nature has produced.
When someone knocks you down and spits on you it's just love...
Onda Technology Institute
In that case expect it to be prohibited by the moral police the moment it becomes available outside of the lab. With a name like "opiorphin", the drug war overlords probably have their eye on it this very moment. What a terrible choice of name - it sounds like a combination of "opium" and "morphine" that just screams, "prohibit me and throw the users in jail!" They should have called it something like vitamin N or freeze-dried saliva extract.
Beside any psychological effect (which may well be habit-forming in its own right), continued over-use of opiates can cause a reduction in the body's endorphin production.
Yes, but chronic pain users can adapt themselves to very large doses with no apparent ill effects, and have a very high quality of life and normal life span, provided they have continued access and don't have to put up with unpredictable and irregular supplies from doctors who are afraid to have their DEA/(UK equiv) license pulled.
At £1 a breath, a heroin habit is not a cheap habit unless you are a rich rock star.
The substance itself is quite cheap. The problem is the prohibition and its enforcement, which makes it extremely expensive (and hugely profitable for the dealers).
A few of things that I wonder about.
1) Who cares how much you have to take? 1g of this stuff vs 3g of morphine? 500 mg of Tylenol vs 200mg of Ibuprofen. Really, we should care about the effects of the drug, not how much you have to take.
2) So, all this does is prevent the breakdown/re-uptake of our the chemicals that bind to the same receptors that morphine does. So, the effects should be pretty much identical to those of morphine. It's kind of neat, but not all that surprising.
3) What is all this talk about it being "natural" Who cares? They're going to synthesize it anyway. Morphine is "natural" in the same way. "Natural" is a buzzword that makes people feel good about themselves, but really means nearly nothing.
4) I like the band Morphine.
Salvinorin A, found in the psychoactive plant Salvia Divinorum, seems to have fairly strong pain-relieving properties via opioid action, but is absolutely not addictive. Unfortunately it also makes you hallucinate your balls off, making it pretty unmarketable as a pain medication :)
If it's so darn simple, why has it taken them this long to find and synthesize it? After all, it's right in front of your teeth.
And how long before you're arrested for possessing saliva?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Or am I thinking of the 'black goo' on an old Star Trek episode.
They steered well away from the planet after discovering that.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Apparently 1 gram of the new drug provides as much pain blocking as 3 grams of morphine."
Yeah...
As someone who spent a night last week in a relatively large hospital, hearing the complaints of other patients in the emergency room and later the complaints of my roommate, I think I can safely say that, unless this stuff is also three time as addictive as morphine, it won't catch on. Within hours of the first hospital dispensing this stuff to patients, at least one will start to complain that they've "built up a tolerance" to the new drug and that they need their precious, precious opiate for their phantom ailments.
Pain killers have already come a long way since morphine; there are other reasons why it hasn't gone away.
Spit on me, Brian.
Ah, that's good. Now tell me I'm dirty.
Scientists finally figured out why the first thing we do when we hurt out finger is put it in our mouths.
As my great-grandfather used to never tell me as he didn't bounce me on his knee since he died 2 years before I was born,
"Sure, you put your finger in your mouth to stop infection. The spit gets in the eyes of the germs and they blindly bump into each other. Since they're so small, this usually delivers a fatal blow and they die off very quickly."
thats it, a nice sloppy wet kiss.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
It didn't work!
300 mg morphine will render just about any human being unconscious and apnoeic pretty quickly.
3000 mg will knock you out cold, stop you breathing, and drop your blood pressure precipitously, more or less instantaneously.
What the article actually said was
Given the rats only weigh a few grams themselves, they were not given 3 grams of morphine.Also, I have to call shenanigans on your claim that 3 grams of morphine will stop one's breathing. Did you just pull that number out of your ass? Here's some real info from the MSDS for morphine sulfate, which says
For a lightweight human (say, 50 kg) and an LD50 of 300 mg/kg (being conservative) that means it would take 15 g of morphine to stop someone from breathing. That's 5 times more than you claim, meaning that 3 grams is probably closer to a therapeutic dose, not some coma-inducing overdose. However, the MSDS does make it seem that the mice were given what should have been lethal ODs. I can't access the PNAS article right now (abstract here) to verify what the researchers actually did.In other news, I wonder why I haven't been hearing more about tetrodotoxin (from pufferfish) which is a highly effective pain killer in basically homeopathic doses. Maybe the small dose is the reason we haven't heard anything--hard to make a profit on microgram quantities of an easily obtained natural product.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
So now the song is.... valium vicodin ecstasy & extract of spit!
Kill your TV
"Honey, I have a headache"
"No problem, we'll do some deep-throat kissing first"
I never liked small dogs either until one came into my life and stole my heart. Muffin, a Lhasa Apso, was eight months old when a neighbor gave her to us and was our friend and companion for nineteen years. To put an old saying another way, it isn't the size of the dog in your life but the size of the life in your dog. I will miss her the rest of my life.
Is a highly effective painkiller that works by blocking sodium channels. Not all pain killers work on the principle of endorphin release, and not all pain killers are addictive.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Aside from the fact that THC got blackballed long before there was science showing that it actually had practical medical uses its got that naturally occurring thing going on, which makes it pretty unattractive to institutions with *finances* (drug cartels don't help or count).
Likewise, poppy tea can be considered an effective home remedy for moderate pain, but make it and risk prosecution.
Quack, quack.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
PETA gets much of their support from people who are opposed to gratuitous cruelty to animals, but the vast majority of people who support PETA are misguided (cynically and intentionally by PETA.) PETA's reason for being is "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." PETA truly equates animals with people. They're evil. Equating the life of a rat with that of a child is simply wrong. Understand this: PETA are fighting against all "exploitation" of animals. In fact, their behavior implies that humans are less valuable to them than animals. Their views are simply sociopathic.
CO2 sucks for euthanasia. There are lots of other things out there. My dad worked in a neuropsych lab. The chemical cocktail they used for Euthanasia included barbiturates and a local anaesthetic. He wanted some for himself in case he was ever terminal and in inescapable pain. That's as humane as it gets.
Still, the animal rights folks got lab animal medicine at that major research institution shut down. I know too many people who'd be dead if it weren't for the use of animals in medicine to have any respect for PETA.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
What if some little kid who doesn't know any better has a toothache, and this poor kid comes across this Slashdot post labeled "Informative" and subsequently thinks that drilling a hole in his aching tooth with his dad's powerdrill is the smartest idea ever? Did you think of this all-too-possible scenario, mods?
Please think of the children.
You also said:
I could not disagree more. That is the very mindset that I am concerned about. From a purely scientific standpoint, there is no basis for calling anything evil or good! That doesn't mean good and evil do not exist. You claim that "evil" science is justified if it may possibly benefit someone down the road. I think I'm safe in saying that that does not fit in to most people's ideas of morality. Should the morals of the scientific community (or a radical subset thereof) outweigh the morals of society as a whole? Do you think that because you have technical knowledge in some area that you are better fit to make moral judgments than someone less educated? IMO, the scientific community, while possibly the most well informed, is arguably the most biased on these issues and therefore not in the best position to make these calls.Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
FTFA:Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 103, p 17979)
But going to the PNAS home page, the largest page number in the current issue (which is v.103) is 17063. Accessing the PNAS Early Edition page and searching for "pain" or "saliva" doesn't turn up anything which seems relevent. So where do I read the original article?
Maybe Newscientist should start using the DOI system so that we can easily resolve and find the original article.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
First let me say I sympathize with you and hope you can find some alternative methods to improve your situation.
I have been lucky enough in my life to avoid any permanent chronic pain. But I've dealt with longer-term acute cases for various reasons over the years.
My problem is that I don't react well to opiates. a) They make me ill, at least at the dosage required for me to notice a lessening of pain, and b) I have a fairly high pain tolerance to begin with.
I recall after a knee surgery - ACL reconstruction amongst other damage - waking up and the doctors wanted to give me painkillers. This was back when they used patella tendon grafts. They saw a vertical strip from the middle of your patella tendon, including chunks of bone from your tibia and kneecap, and use that to replace the ACL. So my knee, and kneecap were sliced up pretty good. After I woke up from anesthesia, I said I was fine (it hurt a LOT, but I could put it out of my mind). They just looked at me as if I were an alien. I refused painkillers several more times before they relented. The pain continued for weeks but I took no opiates.
Years down the road, with another knee problem, they offered me a nerve block on my leg. This lasts about 24 hours I guess, but I really didn't want to lose feeling in my leg and trip over something and hurt it. But my point is that they can do very targeted pain management these days as opposed to systemic. So you may look into that as a possible option.
I've been blessed and trained to be able to put a lot of pain out of my mind. It's still there, it still hurts, but I can just go do other things. In some cases I've even aggravated injuries because I continued doing something when I should have stopped. But for chronic pain, I think as others have suggested, you could be trained by a psych professional, or possibly even hypnotized, to allow you better natural pain management.
I DO understand how you get to feeling like you just want to give up. How you would give anything for a 5 minute reprieve.
Natural methods / training will never be the same as living pain-free, but they can improve quality of life in a way that meds cannot.
Best of luck
- SEAL
In Chinese culture it's a delicacy that promotes good health. What they do is they take the nest of these birds (which is constructed and held together with their saliva), and make soup from them. I'm not surprised that good effects have been found from saliva because the Chinese already knew that :D.
When will people learn? New Scientist is about as trustworthy as Nature as a scientific journal. Totally populist crap. Ivan disappoints me, but unfortunately the religion of capitalism results in the prostitution of even the finest scientific and journalistic minds.
No, I did not RTFA, I routinely ignore all links to that rag.
From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
0 3v1
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/06058651
Oh great, muggers are now gonna hit us over the head and cut our tungues off for drug extraction.
Table-ized A.I.
No wonder Bugs hung around Daffy so often: his slobber was Bug's drug.
Table-ized A.I.
So, I posted my original reply before I realized how many other people have these chronic pain issues on slashdot. Wow.
I've been incapacitated due to a mystery infection most of this year, which has given me time revert to my geek roots and begin programming, writing, recording, and interviewing patients and physicians on major healthcare issues. I'm still in the planning stages, unfortunately, but I'm trying to build some online community and develop a tool to help patients such as myself deal with a mess of doctors, prescriptions, procedures, hospitalizations, insurance information, and all the other data necessary to present oneself to a new doctor for treatment.
To these ends I've helped my local support community to start work on an initiative their calling "The Patient's Prescription". It is U.S.-centric for now, and barely off the ground yet. That said, I see an opportunity here, to contact a unique audience - geeks with chronic healthcare issues.
If you're interesting in seeing the beginnings of it all, feel free to visit http://www.patientsprescription.org/, though there's not much to look at just yet. Additionally, if you're interested in helping, please e-mail the group at volunteers@patientsprescription.org. If you can't volunteer, or don't have the ability or interest, but would like to be kept up to date on the community, please feel free to send a note to community@patientsprescription.org.
Please don't misinterpret my meaning in this post - the organization is right now incorporating as a non-profit. There will be no membership fees, nothing will ever cost any money, and all software will be free and open. We will never even ask for donations. I'm not posting this for any sort of personal gain, just to extend an invitation to participate. I wish the project was further along, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
Thanks for once again humoring me. ^_^
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
- There already are much stronger painkillers than Morphine. Ranging from let's say Oxycodone (opioid potency of 3.5) up to the Fentanyl group with a potency of 40 to 25.000 times the strength of Morphine. This is if you want painkillers comparable to Morphine.
- If you want painkillers to cure a headache up to a migraine, there are many known alternatives from Aspirine to Ergotamines or even LSD (yes, one of the most efficient migraine killers). That is where the described tests also lack fundamental understanding of how painkillers work. Needles in rat feet? Yeah, I bet Aspirine would beat Morphine at this. Ever tried Oxycotin for a headache? Didn't work? Aspirine is ten times stronger! 35 times stronger than Morphine!
- Getting high is a WANTED side effect in opioid analgetics. People that get Morphine or stronger opioids have cancer, autoimmune diseases and things like that. They suffer, are usually depressed and find themselves having a hard time sleeping. No caring, sane physician will prescribe a painkiller without mind-numbing effects to a terminally ill patient. Ever.
- The article contains almost no relevant data. I understand not releasing the whole synthesis, but... Some facts? Intrinsic potency, receptors agonised/antagonised, toxicity?
- One gram of morphine per kilogram? Are they kidding? Even half that dosage would lead every human being to die from respiratory arrest.
Street heroin *is* cheaper than pharma heroin because street heroin is "cut" or diluted. That's why Pharma heroin would be like white gold on the street. It would be pure. The big unknown in street heroin is "how good is it." Is it 20% pure? 50%? more?
Pharma heroin would be a known quantity. In my opinion, it would be the most diverted prescription opiate. Bar none.
You either have reading comprehension issues or you're so intent on seeing what you WANT to see that you miss what's actually being said.
And I really think that at this point, you're just another slashdot troll.
You're being moronic about this. Go ask anyone in the pharma field (which is my particular background) or in healthcare. There is a *reason* that you won't find a single MD in the USA that thinks that heroin should be prescribed clinically. Do you think that they just want to keep you from a vaild medical treatment? Of course not.
The FDA looks objectively at carefully controlled studies done by independent groups and pharmaceutical companies. If a pharma company came out with a formulary that combined Heroin with an antagonist, as well as a micro-controlled CR system as opposed to a macro-controlled system like is abused so frequently with CR-OxyCodone, the FDA would look at it OBJECTIVELY.
You don't seem to understand that the FDA is an INDEPENDENT federal organization. The executive branch cannot even CALL THE FDA and SUGGEST anything. Doing that is against the law.
The FDA does not care about law enforcement. Or prohibition. Or anything else that you attribute to it. It has one objective and one objective only: Ensuring the safety of our food and our drugs.
If you think this has ANYTHING to do with Marijuana, you're COMPLETELY wrong.
And your dirt analogy was a joke. Go eat 2 ounces of dirt. You'll be fine. Dirt is not toxic. It's not tasty, and you'd probably be extremely constipated, but it's not toxic.
Now, go eat 2 ounces of heroin and walk around the block. Three right-turns and you'll be dead. You'll get hot and sweaty, disoriented, and adrenaline will shoot thru your body. Then you'll fall to the ground and probably slip into septic shock. You won't notice, though, because your CNS will be so far suppressed that you will no longer be conscience. Your breathing and heart rate will slow. You'll have a few minutes where an IV dose of Nalexone would bring you back to life, but after that, kiss your ass good-bye.
"the FDA shouldn't be banning any substances"
Are you serious? Then why do they even exist? The FDA has a *remarkable* record in consumer safety. Every American is *lucky* to have such a great watchdog.
And let me reiterate: There is *zero* medical need for prescription heroin. None. If there were, doctors would be for it. Once doctors are for it, a pharma company would work on a fomulary that met my above criteria. Once that happens, it would probably pass the FDA. There are a lot of illegal drugs (or variations thereof) that are legally prescribed. This has nothing to do with the war on drugs.
If you think it does, you're just a tinfoil-hatter and you're not exactly connected with reality.
Sorry man, but it's the truth.
The only valid point in your entire post is that some people have reactions to certain opioids. Considering that all of them have a very similar chemical composition, it's rare, but it's true. However, in my experience, of all the people that have a reaction, at least 50% of the time that reaction is just nauesea. In fact, Morphine is one of the worst offenders. Codeine also.
Past that, all opioids are the same. If someone has a tolerance to, say, dilaudid, they also have a tolerance to fentanyl, and to [insert opiate here].
You have to understand how opiates work. There is an enzyme in your liver, CPY2D6, that metabolizes EVERY OPIATE into morphine. This is why a heroin addict, when he doesn't have heroin, could take a few CR-OxyCodone tablets ("OxyContin") or even a handful of Hydrocodone or codeine tablets to ease the withdrawl symptoms.
Infact, the only question of potency is "How efficiently does the liver metabolize this opiate." Short-acting opiates like I listed before (dilaudid, fentanyl, demerol, OxyCodone, Hydrocodne) have subtle differences in their pharmacology. So, for example, 1mg of Fentanyl is metabolized by-and-large into 100MG of morphine in the liver. You'd need 1000MG of Codeine for the same analgesic effects.
In summary, please don't offer misinformation. There is nothing true in your post other than the fact that certain formulations cause adverse reaction in a very small percentage of the population. And there are about 15 different opiates currently in a doctors arsenal. The addition of one more wouldn't change anything.
Without a doubt if a pharma company decided to market heroin, they wouldn't just throw diamorphine into a pill with fillers and call it a day.
To even have a CHANCE that it would pass FDA approval, it would have to be a combo agonist/antagonist and it would probably also include, in pill form, a CR mechanism.
Therefore, they would be able to patent their drug in the same was as they could if they "invented" a brand new opiate.
Sorry... it's "CYP2D6" n/t
Sorry, it's true.
To reach toxic levels of caffeine, you'd have to drink more coffee than is humanly possible.
I have no emotion tied to Heroin, I have emotion tied to the quality of the American system for drug approval. It has the best record in the world. Drugs are made legal and illegal in many countries based only on the fact that of their status in the US.
You seem to think that every substance is made equal, and that there should be some consistency, which is not true. You're over simplifying things. And honestly, you're out of your depth.
The fact that you compare the toxicity of caffeine, dirt, alcohol, marijuana and enzyte to the toxicity of Heroin (or Cocaine, or Amphetamines, Steroids, etc) is indicative of your knowledge of the subject. Which, let me spell out, is painfully little.
And your arguments aren't even well thought out. I point that out, and you throw back other aguments that, again, aren't well thought out.
Like, for example, it didn't take a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol. The lawmakers at the time just made the choice to use that method. They could've easily made it a federal law. And they could easily propose a constitutional amendment banning Marijuana.
You show very little knowlegde of the law, history, or the merits of the chemicals you throw around.
You use my sentence about the mandate of the FDA, then bring up Enzyte, to which your only complaint is that it doesn't do what is advertised. What does that have to do with safety?
And saying heroin "can be lethal" is like saying cyanide "can be lethal." You're right, as long as it's in a jar on a shelf, it's not lethal. You can give a pot of coffee, a handful of Enzyte pills, and a shovel full of Dirt to an average person on the street and tell them to consume it. They won't die. You give the average person on the street a single syringe of heroin--ESPECIALLY phrama grade heroin--and you will have committed murder. Just ask the woman to shot-up John Belushi.
I'm done with you know. You've made it past reality into a sea of hypotheses and conjecture. You're not interested in facts, common sense, or, apparently, common welfare.
I have a powerful feeling that there's a bridge somewhere that's missing it's troll.
Oh well. That's what happens when I run out of patience. I don't suffer fools very well. That, I suppose, is obvious now.
"Which is it? There's a difference between staving off withdrawl, and enjoying a rush."
These two are not mutually exclusive. Think, then write. You should've been able to figure that out.
"How many people do you know who are just waiting for heroin to be legalized so they can go crazy?"
This is where you don't get it. How many people do you think tried heroin so they would get addicted? Nobody PLANS addiction. It doesn't happen on purpose. It's people who think they can control the drug that become addicted. They do it on weekends. Then they do it on a couple weekdays. Then they do it every day one week "because they WANT to." Then, the next thing they know, they wake up and realize that they can't function without the drug.
Does that sound outrageous? It is. But it's true.
"People who are interested in heroin will do it anyway."
This is not true. If you want an excellent case study for this, look at CR-OxyCodone. Millions of brand new addicts all around the country. About 1/3 the people in our suboxone trial were there because of "OxyContin." These are housewives, honor students, you name it. The truth that CR-OxyCodone shows you is that there's a whole class of people that would never cook-up a bag full of powder that they purchased on the street, but when it's a government-sanctioned product, it's something altogether different. It gets a little stamp of approval from the FDA and people think that it's safe. That it's not as bad as the illegal drugs. This is so far from the truth that it's hyperbole.
Addiction is a lot more complicated than just drug + brain = addict. Even with something as addictive as heroin, most users just stay users."
Wow, you're wrong. There is no such thing as someone who uses heroin casually. It doesn't exist. You seem to think that addiction is some choice. It's not a choice. It's quicksand.
There are basically four classes of people when it comes to this subject:
1. Those that never will try the drug
2. Those that tried it ONCE and didn't like it and won't try it
3. Those that tried it and liked it. In other words, Future Addicts
4. Those that are addicted.
I encourage you to do some reading about the prescription painkiller epidemic that's currently ravishing our country. If you think that it's just in the margins, you're wrong. All clinical trials are usually confidential, and ours was as well. And these are people from every possible walk of life. I had a pilot, an officer in the Marines, two police men, etc. And, all in all, the trials only involved about 1000 people.
There is a serious danger to legalizing hard drugs. And I think the very best, most qualified person to answer this question is an addict himself.
The suboxone trial is long over so I can't ask this question directly, but many of these addicts have said to me that they wish it was never invented. Heroin, Prescription Painkillers, any of them. They would chose not to make them legal, but to wipe them from existence.
Go see the face of addiction. Talk to these people. If you want to know about the war in iraq, go talk to some native Iraqi's. If you want to know about the war on drugs, go talk to some drug addicts.
Then you'll see where I come from.
Effective immediately, anyone caught swallowing saliva will be held without bail until they are released from their addiction!
Put your hands over your head, stick your tongue out, don't swallow! I SAID DON'T SWALLOW! BANG! Damn spit suckers!
On the other hand: Yea honey read this. See, it's just like I told you all along, this is why a nice sloppy wet BJ is better for your PMS & cramps than Tylenol PM.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew